Open Question: What is LGF’s Current “Banning Level”?

Now that the BRC has released the registration stats, we thought it might make sense to follow with a resurrection of a Johnson comment that rests in the “hidden” portion of the LGF archives. The following is from back in a day when insta-banishment wasn’t something that was celebrated:

This is a screencap that can be tossed around, and rubbed in some faces, because we know that if we fast-forward to 2012, the current level is much, much higher than 0.02%. Certainly, it is high enough to preclude Johnson from bringing it up voluntarily like this. These days, we’re guessing it would take some arm-twisting.

Given the current environment of sock hunts and troll “roastings”, a more interesting question might actually be whether a current loozard would have the temerity to ask. But we probably know the answer to that one.

Nevertheless, I think this is worth pressing. Tweet and retweet, spread the word.

OK, well, we know that the level is at least12%, since we have a confirmed list of 4,253 blocked accounts that Engineer no. 2 grabbed nearly a year ago, and we just mentioned that the total accounts currently sit at ~35,580.

Unfortunately, this is where our conjecture begins. Here’s what else we know:

The ~4200 banned nics was the total gleaned from a sample of ~20,000 nics about a year ago. Assuming that this is a statistically sound sample we should deduce that the overall level should be closer to 21%.

However…

The sample we grabbed represents nearly all the accounts that have registered at least one comment*. Lurker accounts and stunt socks weren’t included, due to the methodology. So, I suppose the debate could swing either way on how this effects our findings.

But maybe CJ will just give us an update, yeah?

*According to our data, ~37% of all LGF registered accounts have never commented.

_________________________

Update: We’re embarrassed to say it, and I can’t believe that nobody checked CJ’s math there, but 381/15000 = 0.0254 = ~2.5%. Johnson was only off by 100x (which is probably par for the course with regard to LGF’s statistics)

Banned for just reading the site even though you were registered…..yep happened to me. But I did comment not a lot…mostly on over-night threads….banned for reading a thread. That’s how I got the boot. If cj or any loozirds say different they are lying. You don’t have to post anything at all to get banned.

The situation is way beyond analysis. I do it sometimes anyway but let’s face it. It’s purely mock fodder at this point. Chucks attempt to make some lunatic lurch without a real explanation or plausible cause makes him about as interesting and compelling as a car wreck on I-75. Right up there with why is Charlie Sheen a drunken drug-addled asshole? Or why would a rich, famous, pretty celebrity like Britanny Spears marry an obvious useless tool, show her naked snatch off to paparazzi scum and then shave her hair off? Who the F… knows? Who cares? These people are whack. Why does the ‘reverend’ MC Hammer do marketing seminars now? Because he lost all the fucking money having squandered it on mansions, cars and bitches and hoes like a moron. They aren’t like us. None of us would have fucked ourselves so thoroughly in their situations. So they deserve derision.

I was purged at some point in silence. I went to sign in one day (this would be about 2007-8) and found out my account had been blocked. I was never redirected to the IDF website, but I heard that was a common practice by Foster the whale.

Probably a good way to cross reference exactly how much purging has gone on is to pair it with traffic stats. At the very least it would encompass the lurkers.

I think wrenchwrench likes me once more, sort of had a falling out (ie dumped in the shit can by chunkey soupbone) back in the day. Several times wrenchwrench almost caught one or two of my socks posting due to the over use of ,’s and stuff.

Gosh I feel left out. I was never a sock. Always posted honestly but I felt several times as though they were watching me. I even had an amiable interchange with WW once or twice without knowing she was Igor to Charles’ Frahnkenshteen. What a friggin’ creepshow.

Lily :
Banned for just reading the site even though you were registered…..yep happened to me. But I did comment not a lot…mostly on over-night threads….banned for reading a thread. That’s how I got the boot. If cj or any loozirds say different they are lying. You don’t have to post anything at all to get banned.

There’s gotta be more to it than that, like at least something that brought your account to his attention.

LOL…even when faced with the truth you can’t figure it out. There were many banned for just reading, or just searching the wrong words. (Not me, I was banned by the weasel for not apologizing for a well deserved ‘fuck you’, and I didn’t even say sideways. Bitch). There are way too many ‘anecdotal’ accounts of the Lily type banning for all of them to be “more to it than that.”
But you keep believing that.

When you’re logged in over there on any given thread, you can see all the others who are monitoring the same. Similar stories of stealth banning and arbitrary blocks for reading show up on many blogs, not just this one.

Seriously Grand whatever? The dude’s an old fat guitarist computer programmer blogger. WTF else does he have to do? I multi-task more watching old episodes of Sliders, reading emails and watching NCAA BB games. Plus I work a corporate job that scores me 6-digits for the fam. This dildo CJ is more-or-less retired from what I’ve seen. He really has nothing more to do than feverishly monitor his declining blog. This is not ‘A lot of work’ regardsess of what he says.

Indeed, somewhere in mid-january I could and did log in to be able to easily read the older comments (after not having visited LGF or having logged-in there for some years), then after 1 or 2 days I found my account was blocked.

I twittered @ lizardoid to ask why he blocked me, he twittered back saying he just checked and that I wasn’t blocked, and indeed I could log in again.

Then a few minutes later he announced that I now was blocked anyway for retroactively being guilty of “raving bigotry”:

“But thanks for the note, because I just checked your comments at LGF, and now you’re blocked for raving bigotry”

🙄

For what it’s worth, and for the record, here’s my little short story about it + my actual comments apparently full of “raving bigotry”:

Indeed, somewhere in mid-january I could and did log in to be able to easily read the older comments (after not having visited LGF or having logged-in there for some years), then after 1 or 2 days I found my account was blocked.

I twittered @ lizardoid to ask why he blocked me, he twittered back saying he just checked and that I wasn’t blocked, and indeed I could log in again.

Then a few minutes later he announced that I now was blocked anyway for retroactively being guilty of “raving bigotry”:

“But thanks for the note, because I just checked your comments at LGF, and now you’re blocked for raving bigotry”

You don’t believe what I am saying??? A lot of people got banned that night…I was simply reading the sekrit thread zombie got banned on. Which was my right since I was a registered and a commentor…even though I didn’t comment on that thread. So if you are calling me a liar …so be it. But that is the truth.

The government is compelling a religious organization to violate one of its fundamental tenets. There are disturbing First Amendment implications here. Just because we may disagree with the church doesn’t mean we should disregard religious autonomy. By the same token I disagree with what a Klansman says, but I support his right to say it. The Constitution is everything. It is all that matters in this country.

I do have some idea though, its not as straightforward as you guys are letting on.

Specifically, if he or his proxies (or a bot) are just watching whose looking at a thread just to ban them, why take the extra effort? Seems like it would be safer and save risk of something unpleasant to just ban them before that point, given that you’re explicitly saying he’s not waiting for an overt act.

Oh it’s just such massive work! Only a genius polymath could do that. It’s a wonder he has time to make an almost paragraph comment with each post about right wing nuttery or jazz guitar or AGW righteousness or whatever.

ChenZhen, as The Minotaur :
I’m going to guess that a significant number of the 37% are blocked, perhaps enough to put the overall banning level at closer to 30%.
1) With announced registrations, there was typically a handful that were reported as “blocked socks” right from the get go (these are part of the total ~35,600).
2) Then you have the socks that CJ presumably knew about and tolerated, until such a time that the main nic got banned and the socks got nuked with it.
3) plus an unknown number of steath bans, especially with recent socks (since Johnson doesn’t mention “hatchlings” any more.

Seems you could figure out the “last post date” stat for all users if the sources/methods you used for “hide the decline” are the ones I suspect.

Grand Galactic Inquisitor :
well I’m saying he’s not psychic, people are saying he’s monitoring every single person that *goes to* his page watches them like a hawk and magically knows they’ve done ‘wrong’.
Say posting over here and going back over there and finding out you’ve been banned is an entirely different thing.
Surprisingly you guys are giving Johnson too much credit.

you are not giving his level of obsession credit. I am nothing, I know that, I once had over 100 hits on my blog in one day!!! and yet, whenever I said anything at LGF he replied. I fought Salamantis, he replied, I egged on the weasel, he replied, I up-dinged Mandy, he replied. Like I said, I was nothing, 2500 comments in 4 years or so, but, he was obsessed with ridding his blog of me. Odd…

But for some reason, he needs justification, he needs to be able to point out to people like you that I ‘asked’ for it, so that when 100 others say they were banned for no cause, you, and the rest of the cult, will point to my banning, mandy’s banning, or any of the others who were ostensibly banned for ’cause’, all the while ignoring the dwindling rolls reflecting those banned for no cause.

Either you’re playing dumb or you’re starting to get it. CJ has combed through old inactive accounts and disabled some of them, but given the volume, why should he bother until someone shows up to reclaim one of them from pre-2008…

I’m not one of the experts here, but he does pre-ban. I’m not gonna look ’em up but I’ve seen lots of posts by Charlie where he’ll say we got x hatchlings but x’ of them were red sox or some such unacceptable thing.

But he is also paranoid about people who have been registered for a long time without posting. I think he calls them sleepers. I got that one myself so I can assure you he’s a little bit on the nuts side.

Grand Galactic Inquisitor :
Why not preban then though… ie why wait until they log in to ban them? That’s the question none of you are willing or able to answer.

When you run a cult you have to catch people in the act when the group is assembled and then carry out the punishment for all to see.

That creates the tension that gets the others to modify their behavior. When you condition the behavior you then change how people think. Basic Skinner. Or mafia 101. Take your pick.

When Iron Fist was banned a whole batch got the ax as well as they expressed sympathy, shock, appeals and whatnot. Very much a sort of Jonestown drama and many who wanted to keep their accounts started making loyalty comments and Chuck-up-dings to avoid the same. It was both pathetic and fascinating. It must have been a real ego thrill for Charles.

It is all there on a thread. I am sure you could use your account to search for it right now …

Prior to that I didn’t remember people feeling the need to upding Chuck at every turn. he had plenty of comments with “0” and no one thought that good or bad.

Not necessarily. Monitor lizards were/are employed. Don’t know the extent of control, but they were definitely reporting, and there is credible evidence of compliance threats they made to others offblog.

A query can do it. Also, his AJAX code sends what you are typing back to the server before you have hit post or preview. Google uses the technique with search where it finds crap before you are done typing.

Bunk X :
Not necessarily. Monitor lizards were/are employed. Don’t know the extent of control, but they were definitely reporting, and there is credible evidence of compliance threats they made to others offblog.

A whole psychological frontier in itself, the “Monitor Lizards.”

No one knew who they were (though Sharmuta was obvious given the hours she kept).

Who was a Monitor? How did they get asked? What could they do? Why weren’t YOU asked? Are you wanting in something? Is Charles displeased with you? Why?

The question is, were the monitor lizards really in charge of anything, or were they merely snitches? Irish Hose was likely just a snitch, but asswhistle and jimmah may have had banning powers in the off hours. These are unconfirmed rumors.

A whole psychological frontier in itself, the “Monitor Lizards.”
Several years ago when Rodan axed me to run with the OOT on BlogMock, I’d had little experience on a blog with a large volume of commenters, and the only reference I had to go by was The Swamp. I thought I’d been assigned the job of BlogMock hall monitor.

It didn’t take long before peeps started complaining about my heavy-handedness, and after one particularly embarrassing ass-ripping (thanks, Possum!) I realized that most blogs don’t operate like LGF and I figured it out.

Grand Galactic Inquisitor :
well I’m saying he’s not psychic, people are saying he’s monitoring every single person that *goes to* his page watches them like a hawk and magically knows they’ve done ‘wrong’.
Say posting over here and going back over there and finding out you’ve been banned is an entirely different thing.
Surprisingly you guys are giving Johnson too much credit.

You stupid shit! Do you not know the power of the Jazzy Code? He has Tools and stuff!

Charlie believes that these are people who created accounts years ago for the sole purpose of waiting until the time was ripe to attack. In fact, it was his use of this term that first convinced me that he was batshit crazy.

I know a guy who signed up only because he spotted the “open window” announcement but never posted a word. This was in the pre-dingy pre-spy days. I asked him a year or so ago to check if his account was still active, and he said it was blocked.

Pig :
Uh….no.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_agent
Charlie believes that these are people who created accounts years ago for the sole purpose of waiting until the time was ripe to attack. In fact, it was his use of this term that first convinced me that he was batshit crazy.

It makes one think about why people become socialists. That’s not to say I agree with all of the tenets of socialism but it’s just crazy how insanely wealthy some people are.

It’s a conundrum. I have no idea how to fix this easily. Other than increasing minimum wages. But even then those middle ground business people are in the hole as well. The master and god of industry and entertainment loom above them. This is a 1000 year old system. The tall men. The good looking. The beautiful people are always rewarded more even if they produce nothing. We wait for their charity which never comes. My dream is that “they” would just do the right thing on their own. But that never happens.”

Hey dumbass… in your mind, it is the tall men, the good looking, the beautiful people (ad nauseum).

Funny thing is – all those boogey men you are referring to get up at 5am and work until 9pm at night…. or more.

Galactic Whatever, I don’t “get people banned.” I have no such powers, nor would I want them. I was merely making an observation, that you are an insufferable twit and you’re monopolizing the forum, which is clearly your aim, so congrats. Anyone can do that, if they have endless time on their hands, and a laissez-faire moderating system with which to fuck.

Now get back to your dancing. I think you were at the “I’d do me”-part. Pardon me if I skip the rest of this evening’s program – I’ve seen it about 1000 times over the years.

It makes one think about why people become socialists. That’s not to say I agree with all of the tenets of socialism but it’s just crazy how insanely wealthy some people are.

It’s a conundrum. I have no idea how to fix this easily. Other than increasing minimum wages. But even then those middle ground business people are in the hole as well. The master and god of industry and entertainment loom above them. This is a 1000 year old system. The tall men. The good looking. The beautiful people are always rewarded more even if they produce nothing. We wait for their charity which never comes. My dream is that “they” would just do the right thing on their own. But that never happens.

LOL GUS! Short, fat and ugly and waiting for a handout from hotties who produce nothing?
*uuurp*

Here then. Let me be blunt. Most rich people are overvalued idiots. Take the Super Bowl for instance. A bunch of stupid football players making millions per year to play a stupid game with a stupid ball. Then to be entertained by a lousy pop star who once was probably good but now is like a novelty. All making millions and billions total to watch them play stupid football.

Oh. And baseball and basketball too. Just a bunch of dumb idiots making millions by being stupid fucking jocks while the rest of us live our lame ass lives glorifying these largely illiterate idiots.

BRB. I have to take a leak.

The sports scam is just one example. But hey, I don’t care what people do. Let them idolize these men that “throw balls.” And it’s exclusively a mans’ sport. All the spoils go to men since they are by nature more physically strong. It’s an entertainment venue borne of cavemen, Romans and Greeks.

I am bitter. And why not? Do you think it matters? 50 years from now all of us will be nothing but a memory. And when the human species finally become extinct no one will be here to remember the memories of this lame existence of ours. I’ve decided that I have nothing to lose and I don’t.

I’m still trying to figure this out though. How one idiot like Tom Brady is equal in worth to one rather large small town. Including his equally ignorant wife. But I guess I should just thump my chest in his ability to throw a ball and his wife’s ability to stimulate my libido and call it a day. They are my superiors. That, I find hilarious.

And while we were all watching the Super Bowl they were murdering people in Syria? And I’m supposed to care about these idiots throwing balls at each other while making millions a year? As if that matters? The whole thing is absurd. People were talking about M.I.A. giving the finger the next day. While children were being slaughtered.

Pakimon :
I’d guess the architecture gig that Gus was bragging about a few weeks back didn’t pan out.
Poor Gus.
Lego mastery has fallen out of vogue.
Looks like it’s back to his sister’s garage for the foreseeable future.

Times are rough. We should have great sympathy with architects and “architects”.

Gus…this is just a suggestion, feel free to use or abuse at your indiscretion. I think you should incorporate Lego connector-dots at the appropriate locations in your actors’ physiques, i.e., the crotch. You know which one goes on the male, and which in the female, right?

Best of luck with the project, Bro! Say hi to Sis, if you run into her up at the house. I heard she was trying to get down to a manageable weight so she could go on “The Biggest Loser,” so good luck to her as well.

Gus’s sister says she does a lot of “stress-eating,” for various reasons, not the least of which is her fear that her garage will burn down from “somebody falling asleep with a lit-cigarette next to the lawnmower,” and the unwelcome sight of “ancient hole-y boxer-briefs” in the dishwasher every couple of weeks.

CroMagnon :
Indeed, somewhere in mid-january I could and did log in to be able to easily read the older comments (after not having visited LGF or having logged-in there for some years), then after 1 or 2 days I found my account was blocked.
I twittered @ lizardoid to ask why he blocked me, he twittered back saying he just checked and that I wasn’t blocked, and indeed I could log in again.
Then a few minutes later he announced that I now was blocked anyway for retroactively being guilty of “raving bigotry”:

“But thanks for the note, because I just checked your comments at LGF, and now you’re blocked for raving bigotry”

CroMagnon :
Indeed, somewhere in mid-january I could and did log in to be able to easily read the older comments (after not having visited LGF or having logged-in there for some years), then after 1 or 2 days I found my account was blocked.
I twittered @ lizardoid to ask why he blocked me, he twittered back saying he just checked and that I wasn’t blocked, and indeed I could log in again.
Then a few minutes later he announced that I now was blocked anyway for retroactively being guilty of “raving bigotry”:

“But thanks for the note, because I just checked your comments at LGF, and now you’re blocked for raving bigotry”

Bunk X :
The question is, were the monitor lizards really in charge of anything, or were they merely snitches? Irish Hose was likely just a snitch, but asswhistle and jimmah may have had banning powers in the off hours. These are unconfirmed rumors.

I can verify that and more. The inner circle of monitors had banning authority, subject to review by Fatazz. That’s why sometimes he would say that he hit the wrong button.

In addition the monitors could delete and, yes, alter posts. They loved to alter posts as a last ditich attempt to come up with the “smoking gun” to justify a banning.

And as I’ve mentioned inthe past, they had a hit list of posters that were being targeted for a banning. Pretty much, any intelligent conservative who could hold their own in a debate was targeted for removal. The only so called conservatives who were allowed to stay are those either too stupid to even tie their own shoe laces (Dork Falcon, for example) or too much of a pussy to stand up for their own beliefs (Law Hawk). Ice weasle wanted a hand full of cabana boys and human house pets around to bitch slap from time to time for grins.